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Multiple Strips

Okay, the script now has a new button that allows you to create a new comp with multilpe strips in it. The first strip you select, is the master strip (i.e. the name of the comp scene and the input initialy connected to the comp node). Is this what you meant?

I've been playing about with the script and have now managed to get a sort of live playback. Basicaly, there's now a button in the compositer tool panel that renders the scene and adds it to the VSE as a .avi. However this is abviously slow and you can't use blender while it renders. What would you think to having two buttons in the composiyer tool panel, one to add a rendered version and one to add a scene strip, this way you could choose, live playback, or if you know it's right then you can just add a scene strip. Would that work as a workflow?

Sorry that is a bad idea of mine. Of course you wouldn't want both at once as you could still be altering nodes in scene strip mode.

I just wonder how best to replace the scene strip with the rendered Comp strip? So that when you are happy, you could replace the scene strip/temp version with a rendered strip. Like a convert to render function.

Also I wonder if changing the Comp scene's render resolution (like to 25%) would improve comp node performance when testing in VSE?

Cheers, David ___________"awesome in space and other places".
________Follow me on twitter @3pointedit
_____________ Check the Youtube Channel for tutorials. Or my Sketchbook

It creates a scene and adds the scene strip but when I swap to the created scene Blender crashes.

Here is the .blend with no video attached. You can see from this that the other scene is dead somehow (fails whether media is available or not).http://www.pasteall.org/blend/11951

I tried older builds and still crash when changing to compositor via scene drop down.
I loaded version 0.0 of the script (single strip) and ran it on r42105, this time I changed to Compositor layout first, then canged the scene. That worked without crashing.

I loaded up script 0.0 (single strip) again on r44154 and tried changing layout first, then swapping scene. But it crashes.

Last edited by 3pointEdit; 23-Feb-12 at 22:24.

Cheers, David ___________"awesome in space and other places".
________Follow me on twitter @3pointedit
_____________ Check the Youtube Channel for tutorials. Or my Sketchbook

The error is a slight bug in the script, I think the problem is your master scene (i.e. the one that has your edit in) is not called 'Scene' anymore. Change the name of the scene to 'Scene' and it should work okay. Also a word of warning, long shot names can cause Blender to crash as it has a limit on the length of scene names so change your shot names to something like 'Shot_1, Shot_2 etc...' or something more meaningfull and it should work better.

It may be possible to do that, I'll have to have a look. As for lowering the resolution of the scene, would that not make it smaller in the master edit so you would then need an effect strip to scale it by the apropriate amount (you know the VSE better than me)? Would that still be alright in a workflow?

Anyway I changed the strip names and it works great. However I tried a multiple strip comp where one strip started later than the other. Is there any way to offset the start of the second strip so that it will begin playing at the right point? That is delayed for mix start. I realise that it may not be an accessible value for mixing just wondered.

Perhaps I should just split the VSE strip so that they both have a head frame that coincides?

Cheers, David ___________"awesome in space and other places".
________Follow me on twitter @3pointedit
_____________ Check the Youtube Channel for tutorials. Or my Sketchbook

TWM, I have round-tripped a couple shots from compositor and turned on the proxy for the scene strip that your script adds. Blender will render the proxy but wont replay it having issues with proxy playback anyway.

Wwhere is the button located, that you have added, for Compositor prerender (to .avi)?

Thanks again this script is sooooo cool to play with.

Cheers, David ___________"awesome in space and other places".
________Follow me on twitter @3pointedit
_____________ Check the Youtube Channel for tutorials. Or my Sketchbook

I grabbed a new build r44475. Now I am able to generate a proxy from the scene. So I can do a temp render of the Comp nodes and still have best quality at final play out!

Yay! This is so much fun. Thanks script devs.

EDIT: Sadly proxies are still rather buggy. I find that sometimes the rendered proxies (2 camera strips and an comp effect strip) will get confused. So that the first shot will get substituted for the following shot? Guessing that it has to do with overlaps in the timecode (of the sequence time).

Otherwise the VSE to Nodes script works great.

Something to remember though, the VSE will stretch strips to the project dimensions. The Compositor wont. While the Comp scene uses the source (master) scene dimensions as a guide I did have to use a scale node on the input media to get them to match correctly.

This was because I was using 640 x 480 30fps footage in an NTSC preset (720 x 486). Pretty silly I guess but a usefull warning for variable sized footage.

Last edited by 3pointEdit; 27-Feb-12 at 20:31.

Cheers, David ___________"awesome in space and other places".
________Follow me on twitter @3pointedit
_____________ Check the Youtube Channel for tutorials. Or my Sketchbook

Hey a side benefit of this script is automagically making strips available throughout Blender as media assets. So now I can mount the videos as background art for double edge matte work. without all the fiddleing of finding the right clips to import.

Saves double handling! Biggest drawback is having to match the start frames, a good candidate for automation that one.

EDIT:
Would be better to propogate Strips and their metadata (start frames/offset frames), as datablocks through Blender. I often rename strips I cut up to describe their use, and that doesn't follow to the other areas of Blender. Maybe Movie clips will grow to become this?

Last edited by 3pointEdit; 27-Feb-12 at 22:48.

Cheers, David ___________"awesome in space and other places".
________Follow me on twitter @3pointedit
_____________ Check the Youtube Channel for tutorials. Or my Sketchbook

The new button is in the compositor. Hover the mouse in the compositor window and press 'n' to bring up theproperties panel. The new button should be at the bottom Also you have to name the comp in the box above.. Let me know how well that works as I'm having problems with it not useing the nodes.

I'll have a go at lowering the resolution.

What do you mean by 'Scene Proxies'? How do you use them?

I've tried to use the background image before, but I don't think it's possible, but I'll try.

@tmw: im using your script but cant see any other button in the node compositor, im using Composite Strip_2.py (this is the last one?
i'm looking at the code and cant see any compositor panel description... maybe you refer to VSE properties panel...

i cant get it working with this version... nor make scene proxies yet...

@3pointedit: what you say about strip as datablocks with alt+d instead of shift+d will be great.

Tom, by scene proxies I mean that, the scene strip that you create from the nodes can be background rendered at proxy resolution! For realtime playback. Of course as with all proxies they are replaced automatically by the final render process! Win win.

The downside is that all the other media has to be rendered at proxy res too, as you can't playback varying resolutions.

I will have to ask Turi if he can add the strip's "proxy properties" to his Strip Properties Copy script. As it is anoying to have to click all those values and path entries each time.

Cheers, David ___________"awesome in space and other places".
________Follow me on twitter @3pointedit
_____________ Check the Youtube Channel for tutorials. Or my Sketchbook

In strip proxy tab, make sure that the path is correct (try placing them next to source folder) and that you have a timecode type selected. Then select the strip or strips you want to have as proxy and go to strip menu to select recreate proxy. Remeber that to view the proxy you must set the view as the apropriate percentasge of proxy playback, that is 25% 50% 75% or 100%.

The scene strips dont have a timecode type available. Where the media strips will generate a jpeg avi the scene strips will be created in another folder as an image sequence. To speed rendering I guess that you could set the comp node scenes to 25% scale as well as low res proxy? But you would have to manually go through each node scene to reset them for final render.

Cheers, David ___________"awesome in space and other places".
________Follow me on twitter @3pointedit
_____________ Check the Youtube Channel for tutorials. Or my Sketchbook

Seting the render percentage to 25% should be easy and it would probably be possibe to create a button that set all scenes render poercentage to 100% for the final render. Have you had a luck with the render button in the node editor?